Traditional telephony presents a problem for persons who are who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired (D-HOH-SI). Communication by telephone requires each party to a telephone call to be able to hear and/or speak to the other party on the call to communicate. For hearing or speech impaired persons, audio communication is difficult or impossible, making telephone communication difficult or impossible.
Early approaches to facilitating telecommunications for D-HOH-SI persons included text-based telecommunications relay service (TRS). Text-based TRS services allow a D-HOH-SI person to communicate with other people over an existing telecommunications network using devices capable of transmitting and receiving text characters over the telecommunications network. Such devices include the telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) and the teletypewriter (TTY). Text-based TRS services were well-suited to the bandwidth limitations of subscriber lines of the time. The bandwidth limitations of subscriber lines were also a limiting factor in the widespread use of video telephony.
The availability of affordable, high-speed packet-switched communications has led to the growth in the use of video relay services (VRS) by D-HOH-SI persons. Using VRS equipment, D-HOH-SI persons can place video calls to communicate between themselves and with hearing individuals using sign language. VRS equipment enables D-HOH-SI persons to talk to hearing individuals via a sign language interpreter, who uses a conventional telephone at the same time to communicate with the party or parties with whom the D-HOH-SI person wants to communicate. The interpretation flow is normally within the same principal language, such as American Sign Language (ASL) to spoken English or spoken Spanish.
VRS calls present a unique set of issues in a corrections environment (e.g., prison, juvenile detention center, etc.). In the hearing world of telephones, when an inmate of a corrections facility makes a telephone call there is an auditory warning to the called party that says the call is from an inmate (for example, in case Caller ID is disabled or not sufficient). The called party is presented with the options to press 1 to accept the call or to press 2 to disconnect the call before the inmate is connected with the called party. In a VRS video terminal used by non-hearing persons there is no dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) mechanism to provide a touch tone menu option to disconnect the call before the inmate is connected with the called party. Also, playing an audio message that the call is from an inmate cannot be used because the non-hearing party can't hear the audio message that the call is from an inmate. Also, there isn't any DTMF recognition in a VRS call, so there is no touch tone recognition to interrogate and respond like there is in the telephone world.
Another problem in the prior it is the scenario where an inmate in the federal prison is deaf, applies to make a call to a person who is not incarcerated, a spouse for example. The corrections facility approves the inmate's application to call the number. The spouse accepts the calls and then later in their relationship the spouse decides that she no longer wants to accept the calls from inmate. After her number has been approved to be called from the inmate, she no longer wishes to receive those calls but the bureaucratic process of preventing those calls by that inmate can take weeks to be processed.